From the video entitled:
Who will disarm the Israeli settlers storming West Bank villages? | Soumaya Ghannoushi | MEE Opinion
What an incredibly moving presentation by Soumaya Ghannoushi. There is no excuse/justification for the genocide/land stealing that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people--none! Shame on the international organizations (UN, ICC, ICJ) and countries capable of putting a stop to it who refuse to act, many in which a large majority of citizens oppose these heinous acts. Yet, their leaders do nothing—why?1 It is truly despicable.
Please click on the link and listen to Soumaya Ghannoushi’s impassioned delivery.
Aug 19, 2026
“Soumaya Ghannoushi, a writer and expert in Middle East politics, says that Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank2 is not a series of isolated attacks but part of a wider campaign of displacement. In Qusra, Palestinian families have been trapped inside their homes as (Israeli) settlers (terrorist land-stealers) cut water and electricity, attacked houses and gathered outside armed, while Israeli soldiers failed to protect them.
Ghannoushi says the same pattern is repeating across the (entire) West Bank. Homes are attacked, cars torched, farmers beaten, livestock stolen and olive trees destroyed. She points to human rights groups that have warned of mass atrocities and ethnic cleansing, while B’Tselem describes the relationship simply as ‘Settler Violence = State Violence.’
Ghannoushi points to the growing militarization of settlers and Israel’s expanding settlements, arguing that ‘the machinery of annexation is advancing’. She says the West Bank exposes the weakness of claims that Israel’s violence against Palestinians is simply a response to Hamas, because Hamas does not govern there, yet Palestinians are still being killed, displaced and stripped of their land.
(My comment: Israel’s maltreatment of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank is the result of their Talmud3-based ethnosupremecist policy which regards Palestinians as subhuman. It represents offensive/unjust aggression using genocide and land-stealing4 as tools of oppression, not legitimate defense).
She concludes by asking why Western discourse constantly invokes Israel’s right to exist, security and self-defense while denying Palestinians the same questions. ‘The West asks Palestinians to disarm,’ she writes. ‘But who will disarm the armed settlers storming their villages?’”
Video Transcript:5
“In Kusra, in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian families have spent August imprisoned inside their own homes. Settlers pitch tents in their yards. They cut off their water and electricity. Food began to run short. Stone struck the houses. Armed men gathered outside. And, inside, parents tried to calm frightened children, never knowing whether the next sound at the door would be another stone, a gunshot or someone forcing their way in.
In one house, Josiah Aburida was trapped with his teenage son. Thousands of miles away in Ohio, his brother Lui watched through the security cameras as settlers surrounded the house until Israeli soldiers arrived, not to help, but to remove the cameras, capturing the terrifying scene.
Nearby, Roaya Hassan, endured the siege with her children. One of them is four years old. Her name is Kinder. Elsewhere, (transcript and video unclear, sounds like “another man”) has effectively turned his home into a cage just to keep his family safe. Metal fencing surrounds it. Bars cover the windows. Nearby, someone spray painted two words in Hebrew, ‘death to Arabs.’
Five months earlier, Auda says a settler shot dead his nephew and wounded his brother in front of him. He complained to the Israeli police. The attacks continued. Last week, settlers came to his house again. This is in August 2026. This is not an aberration. It is a window, a window into what is being unleashed across the occupied West Bank. Homes attacked, cars torched, farmers beaten, people shot, sheep stolen, water seized, olive trees uprooted and burned, families driven from communities where they have lived for generations. And the pattern repeats.
A settler outpost appears. Suddenly, land Palestinians have grazed for decades is inaccessible. Roads are blocked, shepherds are harassed, homes are raided, violence becomes routine and the army that occupies the territory doesn’t protect the Palestinians living there. No, in countless documented cases, soldiers accompany and assist their attackers. Human Rights Watch warned in July that escalating settler violence threatened mass atrocities. Amnesty International has described the forceable displacement of Palestinian communities in the West Bank as Ethnic Cleansing (an obvious war crime/crime against humanity). Israeli human rights organization, Betelum, puts it more simply, settler violence equals state violence.
Consider what happened during the last olive harvest. In just 2 months, the UN documented 178 settler attacks connected to the harvest across 88 Palestinian communities. More than 6000 trees and samplings were destroyed, most of them olive trees, some, centuries old. In many, Palestinian families were given just 3 days by the Israeli military, to reach olive groves on their own land. Three days to harvest their own olives. On the first day, settlers attacked them. The families were forced from the groves. They were too afraid to return. The harvest was abandoned. Think about the cruelty contained in that. A farmer can see his trees. He has tended them through the year. He has watched them flower, watched the fruit ripen. Those trees are his livelihood. They are his family’s inheritance. The land is his. The trees are his. The olives are ripe and he can’t reach them. Destroy the tree and you destroy his livelihood. Prevent him from harvesting it and you sever his relationship with the land. Make that danger permanent and farming becomes impossible. When farming becomes impossible, remaining becomes impossible. And it doesn’t stop at pillaging Palestinian land. No, they also attack the water.
In Fasail, in the Jordan Valley, farmer Said Limmer watched settlers take control of a freshwater spring that Palestinian farmers had long depended upon. The water was diverted. Part of it now fills a pool at a settler’s tourist site. Think about that image. A Palestinian farmer watches his fields thirst while water from the spring that sustained his village through generations, now fills a recreational pool. Land, water, roads, grazing grounds, crops, these are the foundations of human existence. And those carrying out this violence don’t operate in a political vacuum. Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has dramatically expanded civilian armaments. His ministry announced the purchase of 10,000 assault rifles for civilian security teams (i.e., Israeli terrorists), including teams in West Bank settlements. The licensing requirements were loosened. Settlement emergency (killing) squads are armed and trained with military weapons. Settler only reserve units now operate within the Israeli military structure. So, on the ground, the line between soldier and armed settler becomes frighteningly blurred. For the Palestinian facing the gun, the distinction is almost meaningless.
Meanwhile, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler (land stealer aka thief) has publicly advocated Israeli sovereignty (theft of) over 82% of the West Bank. The Israeli government has approved over 104 new settlement outposts (occupation bases). The machinery of annexation (land-stealing) is advancing. And this brings us to the question the West Bank forces us to confront.
For nearly 3 years, Israel and its western allies have framed extraordinary violence against Palestinians through the prism of October 7. Hamas hostages, security, self-defense. Again and again, Gaza’s genocide has been explained to the world as a response to Hamas. But look away from Gaza for a moment. Look east. Look at the occupied West Bank. Hamas doesn’t govern there. The Palestinian Authority does. It has maintained security coordination with Israel for decades. And yet, Palestinian land is still taken. Palestinian homes are still attacked. Palestinian farmers are still driven from their fields. Their olive trees are still burned. Water is still seized. Shepherding communities are still driven away. Palestinians are still shot. Children are still trapped inside their homes while armed men gather outside, and their land is still being steadily carved up by settlements and outposts.
(Ergo: The genocide and land-stealing blamed on Hamas’s October 7 attack is used as an excuse to kill all remaining Palestinians and steal their land. Who benefitted [Qui bono] most from October 7? —>Israel).
So, the West Bank poses a devastating question to anyone who insists that what is being done to Palestinians can simply be explained as a war against Hamas. So, tell me, what Hamas fighter is hiding inside an olive tree? What security threat is posed by a shepherd and his flock? What act of terrorism is committed by a farmer trying to harvest his own olives? And what did four-year-old Kinder Hassan do to warrant being trapped inside her home while armed men gathered outside? The justifications change with the times. Once it was the PLO, today it is Hamas. But strip away the change in pretexts and the underlying reality becomes hard to conceal: the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land. It has unfolded for decades (79 years) and is accelerating, emboldened by impunity, international inaction, and the political and military backing of Israel’s western allies.
One phrase has always dominated western discussion of Palestine, [Israel’s right to exist]6, Israel’s right to security, Israel’s right to defend itself. These rights are invoked so routinely that they become axiomatic of western political language. But what of the Palestinians? Do Palestinians have a right to exist? Not merely to survive, not merely to be permitted to remain alive at best but to exist as a people on their own land with the [ordinary rights]7 that make human life possible? Do Palestinians have a right to security, a right to drink from their own springs, to harvest their own trees, to walk their own roads, to tend their own fields, to raise their own children without teaching them to fear footsteps approaching the house? Do Palestinians have a right to defend their homes, their families, their farms, and their lives? The West asks Palestinians to disarm but who will disarm the settlers storming their villages? It asks Palestinians to recognize Israel. Who will recognize the Palestinian farmer’s right to remain on his own land? It demands that Palestinians prove endlessly that they accept another people’s right to exist. Who will affirm Palestinians right to exist?”
For more video evidence of Israeli war crimes/crimes against humanity, see:
Israeli settlers kill Palestinian teen in the occupied West Bank • FRANCE 24 English,
and,
Palestinian Christians Reveal the Brutal Reality of the Israeli Occupation,
“…We examine the tangible evidence of this conflict, including the gas canisters and rubber-coated bullets collected directly from the streets. For those seeking a deeper understanding of Palestinian life and the personal impact of geopolitical strife, this perspective offers a grounded, unfiltered look at the challenges faced by those caught in the middle of these intense environments.”,
and,
Illegal Israeli siege of Qusra homes enters third week,
and,
They want to kill all the Christians.
Reference for a detailed discussion/historical treatment of [Israeli war crimes/crimes against humanity].8
For a detailed discussion, see my: Israel’s genocidal land stealing has never been stopped (updated 8/20/26): Why Not?
The West Bank contains the last Christian village in Palestine. Christian persecution in Israel has been ongoing for 79 years. Less than 1% of the population of Israel is now Christian. Israeli “settlers” are increasingly hostile/violent against non-Israelis in the West Bank, especially Christians. Bethlehem, where Jesus of Nazareth, (The Christ/Savior/Redeemer) was born, is now 2 checkpoints away from being like Gaza, an open-air concentration camp. What was once the Holy Land is now the Satanic unholy land.
The Weaponization of Theology Against Palestinian Christians contains information that while shocking, is accurate.It discusses the role that the Talmud plays in determining despicable Israeli/Jewish/Zionist behavior.
The Greater Israel Project (GIP) is likewise an attempt to forcefully take-over the entire Middle East by killing and ethnically cleansing the region of Arabs/Muslims.
This is an auto-generated transcript that is imperfect. It is based on the audio version of this video that uses the spoken language to generate words that appear in English. I have made a few minor changes/interpretations when in doubt. My comments/clarifications appear in parentheses.
For a discussion see my, Does any Nation have the right to Exist? Also see,
Human rights are based in the nature of what it means to be human, that is, human nature, which is why animals do not enjoy the same rights as human beings. For example, while individual human beings have a right to life, once conceived, nations do not. For background, The perennial teaching is that human beings are, (as part of being created in the Divine image [imago Dei]), endowed with a fixed human nature and certain rights which flow from that nature. These rights cannot/should not be rescinded by any power on earth since they are God-given and not of human origin. Specifically, no human person or ruling entity can gran human rights or take them away. There can be no right for human beings to do wrong even though they have the ability to do evil. This is the dilemma that is free will.
See my: The Plague that is Zionism (updated 7/5/26): A Scourge on Humanity, a short snippet from which is, “From its inception, modern (Talmud inspired) Zionist Israel has engaged in many [immoral/unprovoked attacks on native Palestinians]23 and its neighbors in the region24 as it has attempted to amass more land by [theft and conquest].25 Israeli expansionism26 is pathognomonic of its raison d’être.”
Thank you for this article, the world needs to know what is happening there.